So far my favorite Olympic moment at our house happened soon after we were watching the synchronized diving. Kate went up to Tim and said, “Daddy! Throw me around like the flipping divers!”

So he swept her legs and threw her around in a flip or two, and landed her on the couch. Tyson wanted in on the action too, so we’ve had lots of flipping in our house for the last few days! The kids scream and laugh and occasionally get injured, but overall it’s been a lot of fun! :)

This is an unrelated picture, but I really like it. We went for a hike at Multnomah Falls last week, and Tyson and Kate loved this little cave. Luckily, there was no flipping and diving happening that day!

Here are a couple little videos of some vacation fun!!

Birch Bay!

My favorite thing about that one is Kate’s comment at the end: “I didn’t smash him. I was just trying to pick him up!” And Tyson wants me to write that he wasn’t saying, “No, you didn’t” to Noah about finding another crab. He was telling Kate that the crab was not smashed, and was still alive. :)

Mariner’s game!

This game was so much fun! Our baseball family was very happy to be there to see the Mariner’s win! :)

Yep, I’m starting a new job in a week! I loooove working in Children’s Ministry, and am so happy with how things have been going, and the Orange Conference a few months ago was life-changing and exciting and amazing for me and sent me on a mission to reach every person of the next generation with a message of hope and love and grace and Jesus. I’ve been learning and growing and having fun and building great relationships, and things are smooth and happy and comfortable. So what in the world??

Well it all started about two and a half years ago, when my church decided to start using a program called Fellowship One. I was appointed as the Children’s Ministry person to get us up and running. This program was supposed to become our new database that would house all of the contact information for our growing church, track attendance, and much more. I was pretty interested in it, and I attended all the meetings, took notes, asked questions, and prepared for this undertaking. Over the next several months, I started living, breathing, and dreaming Fellowship One (F1). I even spent unpaid, free-time hours “playing” in F1. When I closed my eyes at night, I would see my mouse clicking on F1 screens. It was all a little sick, I admit. I also admit that it was not love at first sight. There were tears and frustration when I realized I messed it all up and would need to spend hours to reorganize our activity structure. Or when I realized I had to give all 300 or so of our volunteers their very own staff assignment. And I had 48 hours to do it. (Luckily I had some very great friends that jumped in to help!) I even vented to another friend of mine, who went to another church. Her church had just implemented F1 too, and their Children’s Ministry person who was a friend of my friend, shared that she had decided the “F” in F1 should stand for something else! So I may or may not have thought that a time or two, as well. :) Sorry!

So anyways, it all came together, and I grew to love Fellowship One. I went to the Dynamic Church Conference that next spring, and loved it, and was actually giddy coming out of a couple of sessions when I learned about the cool things in store for our F1 future. I also became the unofficial go-to person for F1 at our church. I think that was just by default because I happened to spend the most time looking at it! And of course, I loved it the most. :) So that next summer, when my Children’s Minstry world seemed to fall apart, I was nonchalantly presented with the idea to become the Fellowship One “Champion” of our church. I’d be a church-wide support person, and a resource to all the ministries who use F1 - which should be all of them! I prayed about it, along with a million other ideas, and felt a clear answer that I needed to stay where I was and get us through the very rough waters we were in.

So I stayed in Children’s Ministry, and became content and fulfilled again. The past several months have been amazing. I’ve learned a ton, enjoyed my job and my church, grown way closer to Jesus, and I’ve been feeling like maybe I was a good fit for exactly what I was doing. A couple months ago, I became aware of a possible opening in an administrative position at church involving our Child Safety Screening process, which is a huge and very important issue for me. This process is closely knit with F1, because we keep records in it, run background checks through it, etc. So even in my contentedness, I felt the need to pray about the possibility of taking that on. It was soon after Orange, and I felt crazy for even thinking about it, but I got very close to going to our office manager to talk about it more. But again, I felt like God was saying no.

Sooo (sorry this is getting long!), a few weeks ago, the admin position came up at our F1 Team Meeting and the whole team sort of jokingly told me that I would be a perfect fit for that spot. F1 Champion, Volunteer Coordinator, Child Safety Screening, whatever you want to call it - it was a needed and valuable position that just needed a person to take it on. I shared that I had actually prayed about it, but that I’m incredibly happy where I’m at, thank you. But some of them started praying about it too, and I prayed again, and couldn’t stop thinking about it. So a few days later, I talked to some people to let them know I was considering it (even-though-it’s-crazy!, I kept saying), and person after person that I told confirmed that yes, it would be sad to leave Children’s Ministry, but wow, that could be a great fit. And my passion and ideas began to grow - how cool would it be to help the 2500 or so people that attend our church each weekend connect to other people and ministries more quickly and smoothly and personally? The small-church girl in me gets excited about that. And how cool would it also be to have a consistent tie between ministries to get on the same page with our data and stuff? Maybe it’s just me that thinks that would be “cool.” :) So I have again been dreaming about systems and databases and F1 screens, but this time with the actual faces of people behind them.

I’ve probably lost all readers by this point in my novel of a blog post, so I’ll quit with the details, but it’s just amazing how things seem to be falling in to place already. The job I’m taking on seems like it will be challenging and rewarding and since I am a computer nerd - fun! And Children’s Ministry will be totally fine without me. I will miss people terribly, but I’ll still be around, and my team leaders and others are being left in great hands! I’m not at all worried about anything. Just excited. And it is so cool how God has been working in this process. The timing wasn’t right before, but now that things are going smoothly, it makes the transition easier and exciting. I have such peace about it. And I think it will be great for my family. We haven’t gone to church as a family in years. Well, ever, really. Maybe one time when Kate was a couple weeks old… Anyway, with our way-too-busy schedules so much of the year, I think it will be huge for our family to have more weekend time together.

So there’s my news! Thanks for reading!

We had such a great vacation!!! We spent six days with some good friends that live in Blaine, Washington (close to the Canada border). We were all supposed to go to Whistler, but a giant rock slide - 30 feet high! - took out the road. We could have gone around on another highway and gotten there in six hours, but that sounded like a really loooong time with four little kids in addition to the five hours it took us to get there from Portland. So we just stayed with our friends and had lots of little adventures - the zoo in Vancouver BC, Birch Bay, a few parks, and lots of hang out and relax time! We also got to go to a Mariner’s game, which was a ton of fun! The kids did great and Tyson was so excited, of course! :) It was a wonderful week!!

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This one has got to be one of my favorites! She’s all scrunched up in her baby’s play pen.

Fun outside…

I think he has pretty good form!

Kate loves to hang on the rim!

Tim’s team played at Linfield last week, and it was fun to show the kids where daddy used to pitch!

Kate and my dad dancing to the between-inning music:

We got some garlic bread at my favorite place to eat in McMinnville (where Linfield is). Kate loved it!

Fun shopping:

Kate and Taylor enjoying their lunch at the mall!

My mom and the grandkids:

A couple of Roupp family updates: 

Baseball is over for the year! They had their last game this week. So Tim is officially responsibility-free for the rest of the summer! Except that he gets to be Mr. Mom a couple days a week when I go to work. :)

We’re going on vacation next week - I’m sooooo excited!

My silly little girl made me smile a lot at bedtime tonight. We prayed about five times while we were trying to settle her in for the night. She kept asking me, “Please pray again Mommy?” and how do you say no to that?! Finally I told her that it was time to sleep, but that she could pray in her thoughts if she wanted. She said, “No, you pray in your talk.” I gave in because that was too cute and asked her one more time what I should pray about. She said, “Ummmm, your toes.” So I thanked God for my toes and Kate’s toes and our matching pink toe nail polish. :) That seemed to satisfy her for a minute, and then she said a little prayer all on her own:

Dear Jesus, Thank you for Grandma and Grandpa. And Jada and Scott and Wes-o-wee. What is her name? Wes-wee? No, it’s Wes-OH-wee. Wes-o-wee, wes-o-wee, wes-o-wah. Wess-o, wess-a, wissa. Like you, Mommy! Wissa! Wissa, o-wissa, wessa, wes-wee, wes-o-wee….

She went on singing the Leslie Alyssa song for a while and eventually decided she could sleep. So Les, I’m thinking you’ll get a great night’s sleep tonight because Kate put in a good word for you! :)

Just some pictures…

Kate strikes again!

This one was at nap-time:

Here’s one of many baseball game evenings:

And I love this one. Tyson and Kate instantly made friends with these guys. They’re the grandsons of one of the other baseball coaches, and they’re visiting from out of town for a couple weeks. They love baseball, so Tyson fit right in. And Kate was so cute and friendly with them - she and the youngest one (he’s five) hit it off. Look at the cute little conversation they’re having!

We’re having a great summer!

My beautiful friend Erin got married last weekend! It was such a nice wedding, and Tyson and I were very honored to be a part of it. Tyson was the cutest little ring bearer ever!!!

(Tracy took this picture - I love it!)

Erin asked Tyson if he was nervous at all having to walk down the aisle in front of all those people or if it was just easy. Here’s what he said:

“Actually, I was kind of scared, but I prayed to God and he made me brave.”

Erin and I both instantly had tears in our eyes because seriously, I don’t feed him this stuff! He’s just the sweetest little guy and he has such amazing faith and trust and love for God.

During the ceremony, he was standing with me for a while during the pastor’s talk. The pastor was reading his notes out of his Bible and Tyson turned to me and asked, “Is he reading the Bible?” like the Bible was the coolest book ever. And then when the pastor mentioned God, Tyson turned to me again and said, “God?!” like he was thinking, “I know that guy!” So cute.

Congratulations, Erin and Erik! We love you!

Oh, I almost forgot to put this picture in (another one from Tracy) - this was my favorite cake ever!!!

I can’t stop laughing about this one!

Tim and I were in the kitchen reviewing our day with each other, and Tyson was on the couch, giving us a play by play of the Mariner game. We were trying to respond to him with, “That’s great, bud. I’m glad they got the guy out,” and such, but pretty much we were ignoring him and having our own conversation. At one point Tim told me that he drove by a new bikini coffee shop near our old house today. I was saying that I just don’t get that and yuck. I asked Tim if he had heard of the naked one in Seattle? And he said yeah, and that there were a lot of people at this one he saw today and yada yada yada.

And so here is what Tyson said:

I think that was a fast ball or a curve ball or maybe a slider. And did you know that that yellow diamond means someone is on first base? Oh wow! Now Ichiro is on second base! He’s on second! Ichiro’s on second! I think the Mariners are going to win! The game is tied and there’s two balls and one strike and WHY would people be naked in Seattle when there’s a baseball game on??!!??

I love it!!!

This one is pretty sad! Why wouldn’t she just come get me? I could have helped her get her pants back on and snuggled her back in bed. But instead she decided to camp out on the bathroom floor??!

I think she’s been there a few hours because I vaguely remember hearing some noises while I was sleeping and I asked Tim a couple times, “What was that?” and he just rolled over and then I fell back asleep too! And now it’s about 6:30am and she went to bed kind of late so I don’t want to risk waking her up for the day when she would normally sleep another hour or so. But is that really mean of me to just leave her like that while I sit here and tell you all about it?? AH!

[Update: At 7:25am, Kate came and found me with her pants in her hand, smiled, gave me a big good morning hug, and told me proudly, "I peed in the potty!" She didn't mention anything about sleeping on the floor or waking up there... She's so funny!]